


Feel What You Feel

by still_lycoris



Category: Jurassic Park Original Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: Extra Treat, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25596763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_lycoris/pseuds/still_lycoris
Summary: When Kelly's Dad comes back from Costa Rica, he's not the same. After Kelly has been to Isla Sorna, she understands it.
Relationships: Ian Malcolm & Kelly Malcolm
Comments: 16
Kudos: 41
Collections: Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)





	Feel What You Feel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reeby10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeby10/gifts).



Kelly was practising jumps on the sofa when the phone call came.

She didn’t really pay any attention to it at first – it was a little bit late for a call but not weirdly late or anything – and only started listening when Mom said “ _What?_ ” really loudly. Mom didn’t normally get that mad on the phone, unless it was at Dad. But Dad was away, he’d missed a visit because of some super important work thing that he just had to do. Kelly had got pretty mad. Mom had got _really_ mad.

Mom came into the room. She didn’t yell at Kelly for standing on the sofa. She just looked at her.

“Kelly, that was a call ... your Dad’s been hurt on his trip.”

Kelly stared at her. Mom had been really mad about the trip. Really mad. Now she didn’t look mad, she looked kind of upset and scared.

“He’s fine!” she said. “He’s definitely going to be fine but he was quite badly hurt and he’s going to need an operation to put it right. He’s hoping to call you later and I said that would be okay.”

When Dad had said he was going on the trip no matter what, Mom had told him not to call (she’d said some other things too but Kelly had covered her ears so she hadn’t heard the rest.) Now she was letting Dad call.

Kelly knew that even though everything was supposed to be fine, it really wasn’t.

Dad called forty minutes later. He sounded ever so far away, which Kelly supposed was the phone line. Dad had said he’d have to fly down to wherever this work thing was.

“Kelly?”

“Hi Dad. Mom said you were hurt?”

“Uh yeah. Yeah, I ... there was an accident and my leg got broken. It was pretty gross, bone and blood all over but I’m doing okay now, they’ve just got to do a little operation to get it fixed up but you know, I’m okay now.”

He sounded cheerful but in a slightly wrong way, like he did when he was telling you something wasn’t really okay after all. Kelly bit her lip.

“Are you going to be back for my birthday?” she asked because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“I ... I don’t know that yet honey. The doctors haven’t said. I hope so though, I mean, I’m tough.”

He didn’t sound tough. He sounded tired and kind of weird. Kelly wondered if it was just the phone line. She wanted to think that it was.

“What happened?” she asked.

There was a long pause then. She wondered if that was the phone line too.

“It was an accident,” Dad said at last and he sounded really odd now. “Just an accident. I gotta go now, honey. I love you, okay? I’m sorry I missed ... I’m gonna see you soon, I promise. You be good for your Mom, okay?”

“I’m always good,” Kelly said but she was talking to herself. The call had disconnected.

*

He didn’t make it back for her birthday. He was down in Costa Rica – that was where Mom said he was – for a really long time. Kelly began to wonder if maybe he’d died and they were pretending that he was still okay because of the lawyers. She knew there was something weird happening with lawyers. She’d heard Mom on the phone when she thought Kelly was asleep, talking to her friends about it. A lawyer had apparently called about Dad before Dad had been allowed to speak to her. A lawyer had called again while Dad was having his second operation and talked to Mom for a bit. Something weird had happened and Kelly didn’t understand. Had Dad done something wrong? Wasn’t that why you usually needed lawyers?

“Of course your Dad hasn’t done anything wrong!” Mom said when she asked. “Not like that, anyway. It’s all a bit complicated because the job was hush-hush, that’s all and then it went wrong. But everything is fine, Kelly. He’ll be fine.”

Kelly was beginning to think that when people said everything is fine, they didn’t really know that it would be fine at all.

*

When Dad finally did come home, Mom took her to see him. She said she’d stay too, which was all wrong. Mom and Dad got on okay but they both agreed small doses were better. But Mom was staying the whole week.

“He’s on painkillers,” Mom told her. “And he’s had a very bad accident. People sometimes get a bit funny after shocks. I want you to be really patient, okay?”

Mom was _never_ patient with Dad. Never. Kelly couldn’t help being scared by that. But Dad was okay. He was thinner than before and the plaster on his leg was huge but he smiled and her and hugged her and said he’d missed her and he sounded like himself. Kelly could almost pretend nothing had happened at all if she didn’t look at his leg and just told herself that he’d been too busy to eat. That happened sometimes.

Only she couldn’t help noticing other things. Dad jumped at noises. He tried not to but Kelly saw him doing it. She saw that when he was going into rooms, he was kind of checking them first, like he thought there might be something there. When it got dark, he asked her to draw all the curtains, like he was scared that someone might be looking in. And when it started raining before she went to bed, she saw his hands were squeezed together and his knuckles were white, like something was really bad, even though it was only rain.

“Goodnight Dad,” she said but even though he nodded and smiled, she wasn’t really sure he’d heard.

*

She heard him yell in the night.

It wasn’t a yell of her name or anybody’s name, just a weird, wordless shout, almost like a scream, except that he wasn’t supposed to scream. She might have wondered if it was a dream, except Mom got out of bed and went out, so she’d obviously heard it too. She stayed out for ages and Kelly could hear them talking in those whispers that meant she wasn’t supposed to hear them. Kelly pulled a pillow over her head and told herself that things were all right. Just weird. Weird things happened all the time when your parents were professors. It was all normal.

She didn’t mention it in the morning. She sat with Dad and they watched some stupid cartoons together and she pretended not to notice when he dozed off – and when he jerked awake later on, panting and looking like something had scared him even though nothing had happened at all.

*

It was a few months later that everything started making more sense. Sort of.

She’d seen her Dad a couple of times since. He was getting a lot better, though he was still having nightmares. Not that they’d talked about it. Kelly pretended she couldn’t hear when he cried out at night and didn’t wake him up when he fell asleep on the sofa in the day. She thought she was being pretty good really.

She was doing stretches in her room when Mom came in. She looked really weird. Again.

“Kelly. Your Dad’s on the news.”

“Okay,” Kelly said with a shrug. Dad was a professor. This happened sometimes. The programmes were always really, really boring.

“Your Dad is saying that he got attacked by dinosaurs.”

Kelly giggled. Mom shook her head. Her lips were pressed together.

“It’s not a joke. Your Dad says that’s the job. That he was being asked to check out a dinosaur park where they’d learned how to clone them from ancient remains or something. The park went wrong, the dinosaurs got out and that’s what happened to your father. The people in charge wanted to cover it up and your father ... well, he never knew when to keep quiet.”

She said the last part in a mean way which made it almost normal, except that Kelly was still thinking about dinosaurs. It all sounded dumb, really dumb ... but Dad didn’t lie. Dad was always really big on telling the truth and doing what was right. He certainly wouldn’t make up a stupid story like this unless he really thought it was true.

“People aren’t going to believe him,” Mom said. “I think there’s going to be a lot of press. You want me to pull you out to school for a few days?”

“No way, Mom! We’ve got a competition coming up! I need to keep doing well or they’ll cut me from the team!”

Mom didn’t argue. Mom always said Kelly should make her own decisions – so did Dad. She just shrugged her shoulders and told her not to talk to any reporters and then left the room. Kelly sat on her bed and thought about her Dad and dinosaurs. It was too weird to make sense of. Dinosaurs were just something you saw in a museum. How did anybody actually see them? It was all too far away to really believe in, even if it had to be true. It just seemed _silly_. Like you could laugh at it. How could you take something seriously that you just wanted to laugh at?

That was clearly how everybody else felt. The kids at school who told her that her Dad was nuts. The people in the papers and on TV who said he was damaged and traumatised and irresponsible. Kelly watched people make fun of her Dad and make fun of _her_ and she hated it. 

“Why did you have to _tell_ people?” she raged at him over the phone. “Why can’t you just be _normal?_ ”

“People deserve to know the truth,” Dad said. “I’m sorry. I can’t let them lie about this stuff.”

Kelly hung up on him and wouldn’t answer when he called back. He didn’t get it. Even Mom didn’t get it. And she didn’t get it either because why did Dad have to be like this? Sure, it had been bad, what had happened but why couldn’t he just let it go and let them be _normal?_

*

Four years on, she got it.

Four years on, she couldn’t remember why she’d ever thought it might be silly or funny or anything but the most terrible thing.

Four years on, it all seemed horribly, bleakly, awfully _real_.

And Kelly knew nothing would ever be normal again.

*

She dreamed about the tent the most. Lying there, _smelling_ it. Smelling blood and musty scales and sour hot breath that was right above her and if it dipped its head down, it would get her it would _get her_ \- 

“Kelly!”

Dad was there, breaking through the horror, waking her up. He didn’t come up to the bed. He stood in the doorway, where she could see him, where she knew that he wasn’t a dinosaur or a bad guy, just Dad, Dad being real and talking.

“It’s okay, honey. You’re home. You’re safe. I know you don’t feel safe right now but you are safe and I’m here and you just keep breathing because soon, it’ll be a bit better.”

She could believe him. He knew. He’d had these nightmares. He’d lived through them and lived through everybody saying he was crazy too. At least everybody would know that she wasn’t making it up. They’d seen the T-rex, even if most of them didn’t know just how awful it was to smell the breath and see it and know that your Dad might be dead, that everybody might be dead – 

“Breathe honey. Keep breathing. They can’t get in here. All the doors are locked and bolted, they’d wake us up breaking in, there’s no sneaking here. No sneaking. And you know, we’ve got the evacuation plan if they were here and you know it and I know it so they can’t get us. I’m going to come in now and sit with you now, okay?”

He sat at the end of the bed and reached out so she could take his hand when she was ready. He took deep breaths and so Kelly took them too, feeling the dread fade a little into a sickly sort of cold calm.

“Did Mom and Sarah do this for you?” she asked. Her voice was shaking. She took another breath to try and control it.

“Sometimes, yeah. Your Mom didn’t really know why, didn’t know what had happened but Sarah, she did and she knew people who’d been attacked by predators, so, you know, she got it a bit. Guess she’ll get it even more now. Not sure that’s a good thing really but, you know, it’s nice to having something in common!”

Kelly crawled to the end of the bed and onto his lap. His arms were warm. She could almost feel like everything was fine there. Dad was right. The dinosaurs weren’t there. And even if they were there, they had their plan. Dad had known she’d need one and he’d made one, leading her through the house, telling her each step, saying over and over that they’d never need it but knowing it was there would help.

He was right. It helped.

“You know, I’m never going to go back there,” Dad said. “And you’re not going back there. And there’s laws and there’s everything and I know it doesn’t help right now but you keep telling yourself that you’re safe and you’ll feel it a bit more each day. I do. Even now, it’s better than the first time. Especially now, because you’ve got me and I’ve got you, my queen, goddess, my inspiration.”

Kelly closed her eyes. He was right, she didn’t feel safe right now. But Dad didn’t cry out at night now. Dad was solid and brave and he wasn’t totally okay but he was better.

She could be better too.

It would be fine.


End file.
